An Artistic Video from the Hot Chip Spinoff New Build

Al Doyle (left) and Felix Martin of the band New Build, an ambient-inspired side project to their work in Hot Chip.Credit Cat Stevens

“We had no real desire to release a video for this song unless we found something we really liked,” says the British synthesizer artist and programmer Felix Martin of “Pour It On,” the new single from his band New Build. It was serendipity, then, when the band received an entrancing, unreleased video by the filmmaker Richard Heslop, known for his work with the Smiths and the Cure, which fit perfectly with the atmospheric track. “I had seen a show reel of his work, and I really liked his approach to editing, as well as the way he worked with sound footage and different kinds of textures,” Martin says. The band approached Heslop, who offered up the footage that would eventually become the video for “Pour It On.” It stars the British performance artist Rachel Gomme, who walks the beach while continuously filling her dress up with stones as a personal test of endurance.

New Build — an ambient-inspired side project for Martin and Al Doyle, both members of the electro-pop powerhouse Hot Chip, and the engineer Tom Hopkins — released its sophomore record “Pour It On” late last year via Sunday Best Recordings. Influenced by instrumental and electronic music producers, as well as by British pop-rock acts like New Order and Pet Shop Boys, the album’s title track started as a “funny little fragment,” per Martin, which he and Doyle then decided to flesh out. The song oozes with anticipation — something the band wanted to communicate visually, as well.

“It’s kind of an interesting thing, because the artist didn’t perform it specifically for the camera,” Martin says. “Gomme was just doing the performance on the beach, and he filmed it.” Her deliberate actions pair dramatically with New Build’s music as the song adds layer upon layer over the course of seven minutes, building to a stirring crescendo — and, for Gomme, an ending even more intense.